


a long way from home

by corsage



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: She-ra secret santa, not tagged as slash catradora because nothing actually happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 05:29:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17380484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corsage/pseuds/corsage
Summary: On opposite sides of a war encompassing their entire planet, Adora and Catra think of each other.





	a long way from home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dark_owl_records](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_owl_records/gifts).



> for [kalteneckerandme](http://www.kalteneckerandme.tumblr.com) on tumblr (@dark_owl_records here, please tell me if i got this right) for the [she-ra secret santa](http://sherasecretsanta.tumblr.com)! i hope you enjoy reading this ^^

From as far back as she could remember, Catra had been taught to never show weakness, because if she did, Shadow Weaver would punish her.  
  
And there were many kinds of weakness.  
  
Crying was weak. Throwing a tantrum was weak. Running and hiding from a problem was weak. Hoping, even for half a second, that Shadow Weaver would one day treat her the same way as she did Adora was the weakest of them all.  
  
It did not take her very long to come to the realization that any emotion, while fine when coming from Adora, would enrage Shadow Weaver if it was from her. Adora could cry; Catra could not. Adora could get angry; Catra could not. Adora could defy her precious commander every once in a while, although she almost never did; if Catra even thought of attempting such a thing, Shadow Weaver would freeze her in her path and make sure the pain she felt was worse than the last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that.  
  
So Catra learned not to show any emotion at all.  
  
No true emotion, that is, and never in front of the evil that was Hordak's second-in-command. She'd sneer, and snarl, and purposely ignore orders, ending in the "discipline" that Shadow Weaver had such a fondness for doling out liberally, specifically to Catra, but at least this time she knew she would be disciplined, that she had deliberately pushed her commanding officer to that point, because if she was going to be punished regardless of the circumstances, it was better to know and be prepared than to not see it coming at all.  
  
Besides, she had Adora.  
  
Adora, who always took her side, who'd disagree with Catra's outrageous plans but end up in the middle of them right next to her, who sometimes even stood up to Shadow Weaver for Catra's sake. Adora, the best of the best, who Catra should have resented for being Shadow Weaver's favourite, and did, quite often, but could never fully manage to hold on to the emotion, not when Adora could change her mind with a smile and a beckon to her side.  
  
Shadow Weaver once told Catra, when her other half wasn't around, that all she was to Adora was a pet, a plaything, someone -- no, some _thing_ \-- she wanted to take care of and amuse herself with until she got bored and moved on. Even knowing that the blasted woman was jealous of Adora's closeness to Catra, and was only saying those things to get inside her head and make her doubt everything, Catra still took those words to heart, and had her first ever real row with her best friend. She had accused her of sucking up to Shadow Weaver every chance she got, of thinking she was better than Catra, of... well, of plenty of other things she wasn't interested in recalling. Adora had tried to tell her that nothing she said was true, that Catra was the most important person to her in the world, but Catra hadn't listened, and ran out of the compound in a rage. When she returned, though, the two of them made up, as they always did, and that was when they had promised to stand by each other through thick and thin, to always be together, no matter what terrors tried to tear them apart.  
  
The only thing Catra ever truly believed in was that promise. She believed that they'd work their way up the ranks, and make the Horde a better place for themselves and the others like them. She believed they'd do everything side by side, supporting each other like they always had. She believed that neither of them would ever break their vow.  
  
Except Adora did.  
  
Except Adora did, and Catra had still worked her way up the ranks, and had still ousted Shadow Weaver from her position of power, and had still done everything she told herself she would, but she had done it all without Adora. She had done it all alone.  
  
She would do everything alone, now.  
  
\-------  
  
Adora didn't know how to sleep alone.  
  
It had always been her and Catra, the former in her own bed, the latter ignoring hers to curl up at the other's feet; there had never been a single night since they were young that they had slept apart from each other.  
  
Which was exactly why it was so difficult for Adora to adjust. She had taken to sleeping in Glimmer's bed at first, who was too kind to turn her away, but she knew Glimmer was the kind of person who wanted privacy every once in a while, and Adora couldn't keep invading her room all the time. It wasn't like Glimmer ever really seemed to mind, but Adora couldn't lean on the princess' generally good nature (when Adora wasn't doing things like accidentally trying to bring horses into the castle, or worse yet, giving Swift Wind access to the stables) forever. Then again, the possibility of Glimmer kicking her out of the room one day, something that would probably never happen but had still wormed its way into Adora's mind, wasn't the only thing worrying her: everywhere she went since she left the Horde and the world found out about her seven-foot-tall magical alter-ego, she'd find people hailing her as She-Ra, their savior, strong and brave and reliable, and such words got her wondering if she actually was everything they claimed she was. Not even being able to sleep in a room by herself was...  
  
Well, it was rather weak, wasn't it?  
  
So she thought she'd give her own bed another chance. Glimmer had insisted there was no need for her to try such a thing if she didn't want to, and Bow had looked to be five seconds away from offering _his_ bed to her, and sleeping on the floor instead, but she had refused. It was about time she learned to take care of herself.  
  
Except it didn't quite work out that way.  
  
She had tossed and turned all night, but hadn't gotten a wink. She had tried sleeping with the lights on, with the lights off, with the windows open, with the windows closed, on the bed, on the floor, on the sofa. She had tried tiring herself out by practicing her swordfighting. She had tried that thing Bow had mentioned earlier, about counting sheep in her head until she fell asleep, except she didn't know what a sheep was, and didn't want to make any more of her ignorance obvious by asking, so she counted horses instead. That, however, helped her in no way whatsoever; she finally came to the conclusion that it only worked with sheep, not horses or anything else, so she'd _have_ to ask someone what sheep were in the morning. Could she get away with pretending she already knew what sheep were, and just wanted someone to take her to one? For She-Ra-specific purposes that she wasn't allowed to reveal?  
  
She wondered if Catra could sleep.  
  
Adora missed Catra. She wasn't afraid to admit it to herself: they had been best friends for the greater portion of their lives, after all. They had done everything together, which was why it was taking her so long to accept the fact that they wouldn't do everything together, not anymore.  
  
Once, Adora would have been certain that Catra missed her too. For all her cunning, I-don't-care-about-anything exterior, Adora knew for a fact that Catra did care, a lot. Or she used to know; after the whole fiasco where Catra had let her fall into the fissure in the ground when they were both trying to get out of the Beacon, and the violent battle they had fought on opposite sides, and the number of times Catra had refused to leave the Horde for her, despite knowing it was evil to the core and did nothing but harm innocents and steal power, Adora wasn't so sure anymore.  
  
The one thing she was truly afraid of was that she would never be sure of anything related to Catra again.


End file.
